For our February Portfolios, students created webcam videos for their reflections. It's great experience for the students to talk on the spot about their work in a raw kind of way. We talk about the need for the videos to be imperfect and the purpose of reflection.
As the students reflected, they were given sentence stems to help guide their thinking. The one prompt that really seemed to stump students was: I've learned _____________ about myself as a learner. This is telling as it will help me focus and guide student reflection in the future. Students have no problem relaying why they are or are not proud of their work or if they gave their best effort, but when it comes to thinking about themselves as learners, the alarm bells go off. Any suggestions on how to help students foster this kind of reflective mindset as learners?
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Our Kindys needed some more experience with digital manipulatives and with the math standard of measurement. So, why not combine them together for a powerful lesson?
While both elements- dragging and dropping (now without the arrow keys- using the trackpad) and measuring- were vital in the lesson, the heart was actually the discussion as the kiddos worked. Students ended up using the measuring cubes and overlapped them, didn't use them sequentially, and these "mistakes" made for super powerful discussion. The Kindergarteners had to defend their choices and make sense of what is indeed the correct way to measure. This gave us a really nice read on student understanding, but it was a stellar learning experience for everyone! Here's The measurement Template! It only seemed appropriate to share a little activity that our first graders are currently working on... of course, related to valentine's day!
There's a lot of talk regarding the SAMR model and authentic technology use. Here at DJ, we really pride ourselves on meaningful integration and not just replacing paper-pencil tasks with technology based ones. At first thought, creating a digital valentine's Day card (to then be printed out and sent home) seems like substitution. However, there are so many embedded tech skills that this lesson turned out to be one of the best. Here's how it looked:
Check out how AWESOME they turned out! What could have been a just "fun" activity for the sake of using technology turned into a powerful collection of skills that our First Graders got to practice! YAY! Reflection, for both students and adults alike, is an important key to growth. Careful thought and consideration helps us to move forward in directions that set us up to meet our goals and find success.
Many of my blog posts have been about Digital Portfolios. These provide authentic opportunities for our students to reflect upon their work (in different digital ways) throughout the school year. We wanted to take these reflections to a new level and also address DuJardin's School Improvement Goal of fostering a Growth Mindset for our students. I came across this FANTASTIC article with some really powerful reflection questions to pose for our students. In my opinion, these push our kids beyond the traditional "I'm Proud of my work because..." kinds of prompts. They elicit honest feedback and critical thinking! My personal favorites are...
These have proved to be really thought provoking and meaningful with students in all grade levels! Check the Inspiration HERE! |
Author(s)Jennifer Eggert Archives
August 2019
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